36 ms·

NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

824 points by sea6ear 9y ago

atonse 9y ago
Not surprising. They’ve gone from having the perception of being the most elite organization for hackers to more of what is described in Good Will Hunting [1]. Perception is everything. I say this as someone who dreamt of working at the NSA for most of my high school years, but would now never even consider it. Edit: although I bet a lot of it is the 4x-5x salary jump you can get in cyber security jobs by having the NSA on your resume. :-) [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHvSp9AKYg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHvSp9AKYg
- B-Con 9y ago
  > Perception is everything. I say this as someone who dreamt of working at the NSA for most of my high school years, but would now never even consider it. One of the first three technical books I read was Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography". I loved crypto and wanted to work in it. Fast forward to my 4-year degree when looked around and assessed my potential career paths. NSA salaries weren't competitive to what I could make as a generic software engineer and the NSA was starting to get a bad reputation, and that was well before Snowden. Fast forward to today and it's hard to see myself working as an FTE for the NSA under almost any circumstances, both practical and ideological.
- auntienomen 9y ago
  I think it's become pretty clear recently -- looking at what Snowden leaked and at the trouble the Iranians had with their centrifuges or at the way Comey knew that Sessions was going to recuse himself -- that the NSA _is_ the most elite organization for hackers/crackers. It's hard to be certain from the outside, of course, but when I look at what Henninger et al have written about what they're doing... well, it's a breath-taking technical achievement As for perception: These technologies exist, and it's up to us to make sure that they're used wisely. Right now, the institutions of the US and allied governments are the caretakers and safeguards. They're not perfect, but I'll take them over the competition every day of the week.
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    The NSA leaks we're at once impressive in their technical scope, but largely just things we knew we're possible if you threw engineers at the problem. It's likely we didn't get the really juicy bits, but the vast majority of the stuff we learnt about was just operationalizing things we already knew.to be possible.
  - dv_dt 9y ago
    They may be highly sophisticated for individual operations, but it's hard for individual citizens to assess how well the NSA is doing in terms of systematically protecting the nation or even their own assets. Looking at the scope leak of data from multiple sources such as Snowden, as well as the inability of the agency to protect the government from hacks such as OPM leaks leaves a lot to be desired in terms of comprehensiveness. And maybe it's not in their charter, but failures to promote security among private industry leading to hacks like equifax, or home depot, or many many others, looks to me like leadership is off chasing political objectives while at home we get pecked to death and damaged by a million small cuts of fixable security problems.
smallnamespace 9y ago
It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are also dealing with classified information and safeguarding all the data collection (e.g. if the NSA is going to spy on us, wouldn't you like that to be as secure as possible?). This is another reason why we're going to enter an era of corporate feudalism. There has been a cycle of: 1. perception of gov't incompetence 2. normal people ask 'why are we paying people so much for doing a bad job?' 3. gov't pay scales fall further behind private industry 4. rise in relative mediocrity 5. repeat I think voters largely don't realize how much competence actually costs in the market now and will vent about their justified perceptions of inequality by preventing equalization of pay between the gov't and private sectors, but that will paradoxically just make things worse in the long run as the private sector snaps up all the talent and we end up with a barely-functioning federal bureaucracy. [1] http://work.chron.com/nsa-pay-scale-16399.html http://work.chron.com/nsa-pay-scale-16399.html
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  The weird thing is that they have lowered their standard to hire. I don't see any PhD positions advertised as much as now they want to just higher Undergraduates. Maybe they figured out that they don't need any more math and its all exploit engineering and data collection?
- qmalzp 9y ago
  That top pay grade is less than the starting compensation for PhD's at the big tech co's. Not to mention free food, potential for career growth, and an open non-militaristic culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie. I honestly don't understand why someone would work for the NSA given the choice.
acdha 9y ago
This combines a long running problem in government – not being allowed to offer competitive salaries for high-demand skills — with the new presidential administration’s chaos, and the specific feeling that the agency is not a force for good. I feel bad for everyone trying to do their jobs but struggling under the weight of so much baggage.
- wybiral 9y ago
  > the specific feeling that the agency is not a force for good. There are a mixture of feelings about the agency. The same can be said of the CIA and FBI. And this is nothing new.
  - draw_down 9y ago
    I don’t think you can say there is “nothing new” in how the NSA is perceived. Both externally, and internally as well, if the reportage in the story is correct.
  - acdha 9y ago
    Not new but accentuated: I think a lot of people used to know there was some gray area but thought we were generally on the right side (not unlike the U.S. attitude about torture until the Bush-era reversal), before the pattern of relentless disregard for the law and American interests really went public. A lot more people are comfortable with, say, targeted foreign attacks than broad domestic dragnets or attacking American companies or standards.
    - wybiral 9y ago
      > relentless disregard for the law and American interests really went public Are you talking about metadata collection?
iokevins 9y ago
The State of California recently initiated a reclassification project for IT positions, which includes evaluating salaries. They last reclassified positions in 1976...back when Elvis was alive (note: salaries have risen modestly since that time, thankfully).
cryoshon 9y ago
with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile during applications at most tech companies. if you're going to invade privacy on a massive scale, you better be ready for the consequences.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile You're getting down voted, but I've seen this first hand. I don't completely agree with it. But the employer's justification was that he would never be able to trust that the candidate wasn't a mole. (I pointed out that the NSA is probably capable of better hiding its moles.)
  - qaq 9y ago
    While you might have seen it it is very far from general rule at companies that matter in security space
  - rhexs 9y ago
    Anyone who works in intelligence is evil and should leave and find a career in the private sector, but I won't hire them because they're evil and previously worked in intelligence! Thankfully resume sorting is effectively already an entirely random process, so I hope this comment doesn't bother anyone too much.
    - yters 9y ago
      Should we have no intelligence agencies? A better approach is to populate our intelligence agencies with good people, instead of leaving it up to incompetent/bad people.
      - someguydave 9y ago
        >Should we have no intelligence agencies? Why not? It would get rid of a big excuse for governments to conceal things from their citizens, who supposedly oversee them. If someone in the government needs to find something out, they could always just pay someone to do it on a contract basis.
genzoman 9y ago
the CIA funded Washington Post sullying the good name of those noble domestic spying NSA'ers? Faker News
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments here?
  - acct1771 9y ago
    The only real problem I see is a lack of elaboration on some of the important little-known politics at play, here.
mabbo 9y ago
When I was just about to graduate from University, I had an offer from Amazon on the way (yay internships) but not really in-hand yet, so I kept interviewing. One of the options was CSEC, Canada's NSA. The stark reality was that at Amazon, in 2 or 3 years I would be making double what CSEC was offering. Early career pay in one was end-career pay in the other. They seemed nice, and I suppose what they were doing felt important, but the money was simply too good to turn down. (No regrets either- I worry if I'd gone with them, I might have wound up living in Russia with a roommate named Ed.)
- pm90 9y ago
  It worked better for you and I'm glad to hear that. For some people, the stability of a Govt. job, the regularity of promotions, the lack of long term uncertainty and perhaps the absence of as high expectations makes it worthwhile to pursue a job that pays less.
  - mabbo 9y ago
    Actually, this stability and security was another big reason I chose not to join Government. I had done a few internships in the public service, and what I saw horrified me. When you have job security and low expectations placed on you, it's wonderful. When everyone does, it's horrible. There is relatively little room for the lazy and useless in the private sector.
    - pm90 9y ago
      Again, I ask that you refrain from characterizing everyone as lazy and useless. I know a lot of women friends who choose to join Government service because of its long term stability which is important for them as they raise a family. They are some of the hardest working and smartest people I know. Sure bad apples are harder to eliminate, but that doesn't mean everyone is bad.
      - mabbo 9y ago
        I agree that my choice of words implies everyone is- and that is not true. What I saw in government was a lot of dead weight adding little value and taking home paychecks, being carried by a small group of people working their asses off to keep everything afloat. The dead weight couldn't be fired short of them doing something crazy, like sneaking into the office over the weekend and drinking half the wine set aside for the Christmas party (so the story went of the only guy who got fired from that office). The heavy lifters felt unable to even take a vacation because they know nothing would get done if they left- example, a boss I had who wasn't sure she could go to her sister's wedding in Jamaica for two weeks because the office wouldn't manage without her. My own wife is an engineer in municipal government. She's a superhero as far as I can tell. The dead weight on her team can't be fired, and she does many times the work they do for a smaller salary- they've been here longer, you see, so they make more money. Perhaps my perspective on public sector jobs is skewed, but I've yet to hear a compelling reason I would want to have one.
craftyguy 9y ago
good.
0xBA5ED 9y ago
Wouldn't worry too much. If they're heading to SV, their talents may still benefit the NSA.
- nraynaud 9y ago
  Those fine people who have shown such a good jugement in choosing their previous job will be perfectly fine managing my google history and the cookies in my browser, I’m really looking forwards to it. I’m really curious if they’ll have the power to get more people killed at google or at the NSA.
Feniks 9y ago
This is happening across the US government as a whole. The US State department is dead for instance. When you have talent and options why stay with a creaky ship that's sailing straight into a hurricane with a mad captain at the helm?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
alexnewman 9y ago
Been the story since George bush. I wonder if they would have acted narrowly within the law if they would have had better org
solarkraft 9y ago
> The people who have left were responsible for collecting and analyzing the intelligence that goes into the president’s daily briefing Cool, because the demand is gone too.
- erikb 9y ago
  Exactly, right? Maybe they are not even angry about losing the analysts.
paulie_a 9y ago
Why work for the NSA when you can overcharge Being a contractor for an equally inept organization
Tyrannosaur 9y ago
Might it also be because of the cost of overcoming their conscience? I understand that there are multiple groups in the NSA that do things other than illegal surveillance and hacking, but I would have an even higher price than other companies' offers I would require in exchange for my moral values if the NSA ever offered me any position at all...
- itronitron 9y ago
  still less than the cost of someone overcoming their conscience for working at Facebook
  - RepressedEmu 9y ago
    Only on HN can you find people who think the NSA is worse than Facebook.
jwatte 9y ago
The NSA needs educated smart people. The president has denigrated education and smart people. NSA employees work for the president. Reap what you sow.
- erikb 9y ago
  With the speed of development in government organisation one could wonder if the current fallout is Trump's fault or Bush's faulth, though.
  - zeveb 9y ago
    I think that you're missing someone in between Mr. Bush & President Trump …
    - erikb 9y ago
      I think I leave him out on purpose.
stackreality 9y ago
In this case, an inevitable outcome is likely the privatization of more of these industries. Let companies like Palantir take over the job and ensure we have some solid regulations to ensure Thiel can't read our emails.
yuhong 9y ago
My favorite is that the more the FBI/NSA spends, the more government debt get printed. You may know that the government shutdown is because of a debt ceiling.
dimva 9y ago
This is a problem across all of government. As a mediocre senior software engineer with no reports, I was paid more last year than the goddamn President of the United States (and no, it's not because I got lucky with stock). This is completely stupid and unacceptable. Of course our choices are going to be Hillary vs Trump if we pay the top leader in the country less than a mediocre software engineer. Of course Hillary will give secret speeches to Wall St firms - how else is she going to pay her bills? Of course the government is going to be incompetent and corrupt - we can't hire good people at the salaries we're paying unless they use their influence to obtain side gigs in the private sector (often after their service, but that means they won't do anything to annoy their future bosses). Why does Sundar Pichai make 500x more than the President? Do we, as a society, value running Google well 500x more than running our government well? Government salaries need to be raised significantly (2-500x) across the board, or the government will continue being the mess it is now.
- cgmg 9y ago
  > This is completely stupid and unacceptable. Why? > Why does Sundar Pichai make 500x more than the President? Do we, as a society, value running Google well 500x more than running our government well? Why must the Presidency be the most highly-paid position for the government to run well? That is a ridiculous and silly assumption.
  - michael_storm 9y ago
    Why must the CEO of Google be the most highly-paid position for Google to run well? The point is that the pay for participating in self-interested capitalist endeavors leads to outsize rewards compared to those dedicated to serving society. (Including thousands of career civil servants, since leadership positions have their own trappings.) If we value those who serve society, perhaps we should pay them commensurate with how much we value them -- and get better results in the bargain.
    - chronic193 9y ago
      > If we value those who serve society, perhaps we should pay them commensurate with how much we value them We don't value those who serve society. People care more about Facebook than their president/prime minister.
Jd 9y ago
I'm hiring ;)
- erikb 9y ago
  And who are you? Working for a hospital or something? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8gaoEQqoA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8gaoEQqoA8 Your website can't be reached btw.
  - Jd 9y ago
    I work on and advise several projects involving protection and cyber-security, specifically within the blockchain space.
bgentry 9y ago
Rogers disputed that there was any increase in attrition and told his employees that they should stop complaining and get back to work. Can’t imagine why anybody would want to leave.
ocschwar 9y ago
The top talent might be leaving, but the databases and the lovely toys are staying put. To be used by not-top-talent. Interesting times.
kgc 9y ago
The salary cap sounds like it will lead to more outsourcing, which would increase expenses overall.
scarmig 9y ago
Question: how does this compare to other states? I'm particularly interested in China's equivalent(s?) of the NSA. Do they manage to retain talent? Is it because the PRC's elite believes more in its mission? Is it higher status than the NSA? Do they offer higher relative salaries?
- deleted 9y ago
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- gervase 9y ago
  I think the best we can do is speculate on this, as China's cyber capabilities are still relatively unknown by the public [0]. However, based on their investment in academics and a generally more positive view of government jobs in general (possibly due to historic sociocultural contexts [1]), I believe it's likely that their equivalent groups are probably treated quite well. For example, for successful US-trained Chinese researchers, the Chinese government offers generous funding, publication bonuses [2], and high pay (comparable to, or better than, US institutions) for those who are willing to return to China and run research labs there. Additionally, due to the relative lack of commercial opportunities for talent, creative, and ambitious home-grown talent (vs the opportunities in the US available to similar US-trained talent), the bar the government must exceed is commensurately lower. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination 2. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/cash-bonuses-peer-reviewed-papers-go-global http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/cash-bonuses-peer-rev...
jhiska 9y ago
>If the NSA is going to spy on us, wouldn't you like that to be as secure as possible? I'd rather those perverts not peep on us; this isn't an unreasonable request.
zaro 9y ago
Finally some good news from NSA.
candiodari 9y ago
> the nation’s 17 spy agencies. 17. WTF.
- ENOTTY 9y ago
  From Wikipedia[1]: CIA, NSA/CSS, NRO, DIA, NGA, intelligence elements of the five armed forces (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard), and intelligence elements of the State Department, Department of Energy, DHS, Treasury, DEA, FBI, and finally overseeing them all, ODNI. Each specializes in collecting a different kind of intelligence or in a different focus for analysis. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...
  - yters 9y ago
    Why do the DoE and Treasury need intelligence elements?
    - foxhound6 9y ago
      DoE handles the nuclear arsenal. Treasury contains the Secret Service.
    - ENOTTY 9y ago
      Treasury handles tracking of financial flows involving sanctioned entities, terrorist groups, nations hostile to the US, etc. DoE handles nukes.
ENOTTY 9y ago
By way of comparison, GCHQ personnel seem to be leaving for 4-5x salary from big tech companies[1]. So do the math and figure out what the GCHQ folks are being paid. Also, GCHQ has hired 494 contractors for 71m GBP[2]. [1]: https://sites.google.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/files/2016-2017_ISC_AR.pdf?attredirects=1 https://sites.google.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/files/2016..., page 40 [2]: Ibid, page 70
- sofaofthedamned 9y ago
  I live in Cheltenham and pre-Snowden may have entertained the idea for working there. I tracked a job they were advertising for nearly a year - they were offering ~32k for a Linux expert with years of experience. Good luck on that one. I think they eventually converted it to a contract role, but even then I wouldn't entertain it. Another friend worked at the big James Bond building in London, was regularly taken around the world at short notice to do security things, and was on less than 40k. He loved that job more than anything in the world but literally couldn't afford to live there so went contracting for 5x the money. Apparently in the government a large part of salary reviews is based on (age + seniority), so you're waiting a long time for a decent uplift that may never arrive.
  - ENOTTY 9y ago
    Just to be clear, your amounts are in GBP right?
    - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
      Yup.
tequila_shot 9y ago
Honest question: What's the skillset of a hacker at NSA? Not that I'm targeting to become one, just curious as to how someone would become a hacker.
mooneater 9y ago
Might expect this to ultimately lead to privatization of these services. Which is black mirror territory.
natch 9y ago
There's a lot of blaming of external factors being injected into this discussion. Namely, government pay scales, and the Trump factor. But let's not forget the NSA's own self-inflicted wounds as well. Let's see, here's what I remember: * mission creep * overreach * LOVEINT * massive collection of bulk intelligence with dubious justifications * withholding information about 0 days it wanted to stockpile for its own use * misleading technical committees so as to weaken encryption and security related standards * introducing flawed security protocols * paying money to security companies (RSA) to introduce weaknesses * (thus with the above four items) actively sabotaging its own mission of helping to secure our nation's systems * allowing its documents to be leaked en masse * allowing possibly its most powerful and dangerous (though we don't know) sets of tools to be leaked as well. Did I forget anything?
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Yes, you forgot one thing: * We need a powerful spy organization to compete on the world stage. This is an unpopular truth that people in our circles tend to forget. Rome was an influence solely due to the success of their military. What do you think will happen when ours becomes ineffective? And the NSA is a key part of our military. Intelligence is everything. I think it's good the overreach was exposed, but I was worried about exactly this outcome.
  - perfunctory 9y ago
    "* We need a powerful spy organization to compete on the world stage." - maybe I'm missing some irony here, but how is this a "self-inflicted wound"?
  - kodablah 9y ago
    > We need a powerful spy organization to compete on the world stage I disagree or at least don't agree to the extent I might have in a more embattled time (i.e. any time in the past). I do agree intelligence serves the military well, I just don't agree with military intelligence scope growth at a time when military use is shrinking. I'm not sure history repeats itself here as much as perpetuates the justifications being used.
nathanvanfleet 9y ago
Good?
bariswheel 9y ago
This is not a good thing at all. This will lead to a shittier NSA and with their power, this is a lousy combination,
candiodari 9y ago
> The brain drain has been so pronounced that at one gathering in 2016 of the agency’s elite hacking division, one individual raised the concern with Rogers directly. According to several people familiar with the exchange, Rogers disputed that there was any increase in attrition and told his employees that they should stop complaining and get back to work. Remember this. As someone who started their professional life in 2000, lived through 2009, and went through a multinational's "reorg" (mass-firing by geography, several 10s of thousands of people), let me tell you : As soon as you notice there is general discontent, and people no longer care enough about their jobs to ask questions like this to the top brass, it is time to make sure you have another job lined up. You can get better jobs this way, and the hammer will come down. Above all, know that this Rogers guy is fairly honest. And yet, he directly contradicts the Washington Post. He's an exec, and he has ONE job : do exactly what his superiors say without bother them. He (once for me it was a she) will NOT give you any piece of information you do not already have. They are there to get people to work together. By "motivating". By lying. By cheating. This means that when it comes to the health of the company and your future job prospects, a sober chat with the cleaning staff will yield more useful information than an hour long "fireside chat" with a highly placed manager. Not because they know a lot, but simply because they don't lie, and they know a little. An executive is not talking to you, except in the way a vet is talking to stray dogs at the impound. They don't respect you, they can't do anything for you, they don't like you ... and they're very, very good at hiding this (just look at financial presentations on youtube, say of the IBM CEO, knowing that she has for years, every 2 months or so, fired 1000+ people, with the constant online reports of them getting cheated out of severance. Listen to her, then think about the kind of person who does that. You half expect to get free candy and a hug every 2 minutes or so when listening to her. Or listen to Clinton talking, knowing that he's the sort of man that threatens women to have sex with him. Think about what those people he talks to really mean to him)
- itronitron 9y ago
  I feel like many organizations, of which NSA is one example, make the mistake of putting technical program leads in charge of people. Leading people and motivating them to do their best work together requires a different skill set, and Rogers' response to the vocalized attrition concern suggests that he isn't capable of keeping people in the organization. I appreciate that he took time to talk with staff and take questions but he needs to become a better listener, or in other words ... work on his signals intelligence.
zeep 9y ago
Now they really won't be able to analyze all that data...
rdl 9y ago
I remember predicting this back when the Snowden first leaked, and someone popular on HN saying it wouldn't happen. I suspect the reorg and general politics outside NSA have had a bigger impact than "oh, spying is wrong" in popular culture, though.
danielovichdk 9y ago
I wonder if there is also some people morale in this. I mean, if I was a hacker and knew what the NSA had been up to in regards of mass-surveilance, my integrity and morale would be like "heck no, thies org' fucked up and I want nothing to do with them, at all!".
peter_retief 9y ago
I would love to work for them, creative interesting projects with funding, pick me!
Maryaki 9y ago
great
bryanrasmussen 9y ago
Actually I remember reading at some point that the people who have the best careers in tech move between government and private at the right times, when there is going to be a downturn in the economy they move into the security of government work and work on the rules and regulations that will govern the future, as the economy turns back up they move into consulting regarding those particular rules and regulations. This actually points to one of my major career mistakes in that when I left my government job I was burned out on the standard I had just spent some years seeing through to law, and instead of working consulting on it I took a totally unrelated job (based on the enticements of a friend who promised we would get to work on something I really wanted to work on) I left millions on the table just by that one stupid decision. but then again I was really burned out on it. on edit: improved formatting
pjc50 9y ago
Another view: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/who-is-reality-winner.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/who-is-reality-... That was circulated with the comment "the risk is not so much people running to the Russians as people running to civil society - the NSA is not as popular as they think." The NSA, like much of the US system, demands absolute unconditional loyalty. Internal dissent is not possible. Taking dissent public will get you sent to prison where you're not allowed to speak to journalists.
- erikb 9y ago
  replace prison with getting fired and you have the same in the industry.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Those are two rather different things though?
  - pm90 9y ago
    Clearly you've never been to prison.
    - erikb 9y ago
      Clearly the point is not the comparison between the impact of both experiences on the receiving end.
tanilama 9y ago
Consider it has such bad reputation and public image, and subpar salary this is not surprising at all.
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meri_dian 9y ago
Seems like we should redirect some of the funding the traditional military branches get to the NSA. The work they do is more relevant and important than ever before, and it doesn't look like we're going to have a hot war any time soon.
ataturk 9y ago
Let's be honest for a minute: There's been a major regime change in the US. The "talent" leaving were probably given a choice between going quietly or being prosecuted. Mr. Binney may have had something to do with all of it.
throwaway19372 9y ago
Disclaimer: I work for the federal government, but my thoughts are my own. From what I have seen, there are a mix of issues that cause this: - It takes a long time to hire someone (usually 2-3 months), and if they need a clearance, the process is even longer (some clearances can take easily over a year now, and that person cannot do any work until they have them). - A lot of people want to go into these organizations to do cool things, but then find out they have a lot of additional duties they do not wish to do. - Government salaries are capped, and it is very difficult to fire a government civilian. The issue of taking a long time to hire someone means that if someone leaves, their job does not go away. So their duties have to go somewhere, usually on someone else, and that will take a minimum of 3 months if you hire someone off the street. If the job requires a clearance, you now are waiting over a year if the person did not have the right clearance (while the person sits on that spot, so you can't hire anyone else if they come up). From what I have seen, most people hired off of the streets are from college/grad school, and they are excited to do technical work. However, since the government caps civilian salaries, they will frequently contract out technical work (so they can hire the very expensive technical personnel). This means most of the technical work is done by contractors. Civilians more often than not oversee the contractors doing the technical work. If you have a technically inclined government civilian, then those contractors frequently snatch them up. So now you have a compounding problem of it is difficult to hire/keep technical people, and the work they do is more and more non-technical, as most of the work to oversee contractors is what is called an "inherently governmental function", so those have to be done by a government person. This is a negative feedback loop that really hurts keeping these types of technical people.
0xADADA 9y ago
Tis article reeks of Executive Branch propaganda from anonymous sources "according to current and former U.S. officials" etc etc
RogueIMP 9y ago
This isn't just NSA, but tech positions GOV wide. Lots of locations are requiring Contractors be put on an equivalent pay scale as the GOV employees, causing them both to look elsewhere... Why take a position with less stability and benefits, for the same, and in some cases less, pay.
known 9y ago
What's wrong in leaving when somebody is paying better?
k__ 9y ago
They probably hoped, if they work long enough for the man, they'll become the man.
boysabr3 9y ago
Related: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/8/15557846/stripe-peiter-mudge-zatko-jon-kaltwasser-security-hire https://www.recode.net/2017/5/8/15557846/stripe-peiter-mudge...
jancsika 9y ago
I'd suggest separating these anonymous complaints into those which at least have boolean choices and those which have unary choices. Reorganization of dept. has created red tape. Ok, that seems like one of many opinions a source at the NSA could have. Snowden hurt our agency and made our jobs more difficult. I'm not sure that an NSA source could have any other opinions on this matter, especially given that a) I've never read anyone who currently works at the NSA call Snowden anything but a traitor and b) the NSA certainly knows the identity of the sources for this story. I think we have to reject such complaints as facile.
andy_ppp 9y ago
I read somewhere that 70% of US intelligence spending these days was on private contracting companies anyway. I guess if you’re good you'll end up at one of them?
DannyB2 9y ago
> The people who have left were responsible for collecting > and analyzing the intelligence that goes into the > president’s daily briefing. I seem to recall that the president's daily briefing is now a single page with pictures. How many people does it take to produce that?
- ixtli 9y ago
  Why is this getting down voted?
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
Privatizing lots of their jobs, and seeing their jobs given to people who are on privatized salaries with private companies, bleeding the tax payer more.. of course they are going to jump ship for a higher salray. Stop the private contracting of some of our most sensitive missions, and you'll stop this.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
I'll never forget talking to an NSA recruiter (cybersecurity expert doing a recruiting assignment, not a full-time recruiter) at a university job fair. I asked if he felt like he was really spending most of his time protecting people or if a lot of it was political agenda and budget protection, etc. His answer was, "well, it's not all politics..." Thank you, recruiter, for making that career choice a supremely easy one.
nimbius 9y ago
Speaking from experience, I applied to the NSA a few years ago and its surreal how unrealistic the expectations were. a major problem with NSA employment is the mandatory 5 year contractor like status period with half-pay. the NSA expects seasoned professionals from the private sector to join its ranks with a 33k salary? get real. The agency also prides itself on an almost obscene reliance on Polygraphs, a technology no more accurate or scientifically sound than a babushka shuffling chicken bones and reading tea leaves. I also wasnt exactly blown away by the interview questions. my technical screening for a Linux position came from former members of the military, who grilled me on 2 unix questions before asking if they could switch to windows, confessing they 'didnt know much linux.'
- jessriedel 9y ago
  > The agency also prides itself on an almost obscene reliance on Polygraphs, a technology no more accurate or scientifically sound than a babushka shuffling chicken bones and reading tea leaves. I can't find out why I see smart people repeating this all the time. It's not true. Polygraphs are very flawed, and they are especially vulnerable to preparatory countermeasures, but they have non-trivial predictive power. When I ask people to justify their dismissal of polygraphs, they generally point to the fact that they are not allowed in court, but this is a terrible reason. Hearsay isn't allowed in court either but that doesn't mean it isn't useful.
  - dclowd9901 9y ago
    If it doesn't stand up to "beyond a reasonable doubt" how can you have such faith in it? Hearsay is a fine example, as I wouldn't want my innocence predicated upon someone's flawed memory or whim.
    - jessriedel 9y ago
      Because "beyond a reasonable doubt" is a much higher level of certainty than we have for making many decisions in life? The NSA isn't jailing people based on a lie-detector, they are just using it as a necessary but not sufficient criteria for granting security access. It's OK to deny such access based on weak or circumstantial evidence.
_zachs 9y ago
I've got an idea, stop giving Congress free health care and stop giving Congress a $100k a year pension after they've resigned. Bam, there's your competitive salary to offer NSA engineers.
- forgotmysn 9y ago
  wow thank you so much for your brilliant solution. considering that both of those require Congress to accomplish, do you have another brilliant idea for getting them to do it?
dvradrebel 9y ago
A lot of EU security experts (UK included) take time off to make extra money through companies like ours - senseiclub.com - to train corporate in anything from ethical hacking to certified GDPR compliance - they can't be making much at their regular jobs. Some even register their own company - which makes sense - as freelancing full time, end of the day, is possible. Make your own schedule, decline to go to work, take a month off - it's good fun. We got some people booked for over 110 days out of 250 for 2018 already. As for pensions and savings - folks go to wealth managers. Hit me up if you want some really good training courses for your company or your buddy is looking for extra gigs (GCHQ folks are welcome). Think productschool.com for cyber security, compliance, cloud and data. Cheerio
jcoffland 9y ago
Government work also suffers from over regulation. A friend of mine who works for a major defense contractor as an electrical engineer is literally not allowed to use a screwdriver driver. He must requisition a union worker for jobs involving a screwdriver. This takes tons of time and the simple job may ultimately never get done. In practice, he and his colleagues wait until after 5pm, when the union guys have gone, to use screwdrivers. I told this story to my Uncle who worked for 30 years at a national lab. He said they had a similar problem and solution for using a broom to sweep up a mess in their work area. These stories sound unbelievable but I believe they are common and that situations like this regularly cripple and demoralize government work.
- Danihan 9y ago
  And this is why government projects are essentially doomed to fail versus capitalism, in the long-view.
angel_j 9y ago
Don't hire these people!
throwitfarfar 9y ago
NSA is in the middle of a bozo explosion. It's hard to keep good people when they have to deal with so many bozos. To give you an example, there was a reorg a few years ago to outsource NSA's IT. (Makes a lot of sense that an agency that pretty much only does IT would outsource IT, right?) In the reorg, 500+ people were identified as having no discernible skill that was relevant to the mission. They were segregated into their own org and given busy work. When the outsourcing occurred, the contractor was incentivized to employ and retain them for 2 years, including the 500+. To entice them, they paid them above their government salary. The contractor could not figure out what to do with them either. It treated them as "casual employees". They were given a salary, but did not have to report to work and had no responsibilities. For 2 years. Once the incentive ran out, these folks went back to NSA and got rehired as government employees. According to the hiring rules, they went right to the top of the stack.
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naveen99 9y ago
Or maybe anyone who understands cryptography enough to work at the NSA, understands bitcoin and blockchains enough to realize they can make a lot more money for a lot less effort in cryptocurrencies. Same with machine learning. The crypto bubble goes beyond money, it goes to creativity and brain drain from the rest of the economy.
- gozur88 9y ago
  Plus security. It's always been a skill in relatively high demand, but in the last ten years or so companies have been willing to pay whatever it takes to avoid getting hacked. My company brought in all sorts of consultants just after, coincidentally I'm sure, the Target CEO lost his job because of a hack.
ataturk 9y ago
Any chance, any chance at all we will return to Constitutional government in the US? You know, where the machine isn't spying on us all 24/7?
z0ltan 9y ago
LOL.
zcytrewq 9y ago
I was not sure do NSA have any morals to flag about ??
kalop 9y ago
They end up going to private corporations like Booz Allen, then the government ends up contracting these companies in the private sector lol.

824 points by sea6ear 9y ago

Not surprising. They’ve gone from having the perception of being the most elite organization for hackers to more of what is described in Good Will Hunting [1]. Perception is everything. I say this as someone who dreamt of working at the NSA for most of my high school years, but would now never even consider it. Edit: although I bet a lot of it is the 4x-5x salary jump you can get in cyber security jobs by having the NSA on your resume. :-) [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHvSp9AKYg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHvSp9AKYg

B-Con 9y ago
> Perception is everything. I say this as someone who dreamt of working at the NSA for most of my high school years, but would now never even consider it. One of the first three technical books I read was Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography". I loved crypto and wanted to work in it. Fast forward to my 4-year degree when looked around and assessed my potential career paths. NSA salaries weren't competitive to what I could make as a generic software engineer and the NSA was starting to get a bad reputation, and that was well before Snowden. Fast forward to today and it's hard to see myself working as an FTE for the NSA under almost any circumstances, both practical and ideological.
auntienomen 9y ago
I think it's become pretty clear recently -- looking at what Snowden leaked and at the trouble the Iranians had with their centrifuges or at the way Comey knew that Sessions was going to recuse himself -- that the NSA _is_ the most elite organization for hackers/crackers. It's hard to be certain from the outside, of course, but when I look at what Henninger et al have written about what they're doing... well, it's a breath-taking technical achievement As for perception: These technologies exist, and it's up to us to make sure that they're used wisely. Right now, the institutions of the US and allied governments are the caretakers and safeguards. They're not perfect, but I'll take them over the competition every day of the week.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  The NSA leaks we're at once impressive in their technical scope, but largely just things we knew we're possible if you threw engineers at the problem. It's likely we didn't get the really juicy bits, but the vast majority of the stuff we learnt about was just operationalizing things we already knew.to be possible.
- dv_dt 9y ago
  They may be highly sophisticated for individual operations, but it's hard for individual citizens to assess how well the NSA is doing in terms of systematically protecting the nation or even their own assets. Looking at the scope leak of data from multiple sources such as Snowden, as well as the inability of the agency to protect the government from hacks such as OPM leaks leaves a lot to be desired in terms of comprehensiveness. And maybe it's not in their charter, but failures to promote security among private industry leading to hacks like equifax, or home depot, or many many others, looks to me like leadership is off chasing political objectives while at home we get pecked to death and damaged by a million small cuts of fixable security problems.

smallnamespace 9y ago

It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are also dealing with classified information and safeguarding all the data collection (e.g. if the NSA is going to spy on us, wouldn't you like that to be as secure as possible?). This is another reason why we're going to enter an era of corporate feudalism. There has been a cycle of: 1. perception of gov't incompetence 2. normal people ask 'why are we paying people so much for doing a bad job?' 3. gov't pay scales fall further behind private industry 4. rise in relative mediocrity 5. repeat I think voters largely don't realize how much competence actually costs in the market now and will vent about their justified perceptions of inequality by preventing equalization of pay between the gov't and private sectors, but that will paradoxically just make things worse in the long run as the private sector snaps up all the talent and we end up with a barely-functioning federal bureaucracy. [1] http://work.chron.com/nsa-pay-scale-16399.html http://work.chron.com/nsa-pay-scale-16399.html

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zitterbewegung 9y ago
The weird thing is that they have lowered their standard to hire. I don't see any PhD positions advertised as much as now they want to just higher Undergraduates. Maybe they figured out that they don't need any more math and its all exploit engineering and data collection?
qmalzp 9y ago
That top pay grade is less than the starting compensation for PhD's at the big tech co's. Not to mention free food, potential for career growth, and an open non-militaristic culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie. I honestly don't understand why someone would work for the NSA given the choice.

acdha 9y ago

This combines a long running problem in government – not being allowed to offer competitive salaries for high-demand skills — with the new presidential administration’s chaos, and the specific feeling that the agency is not a force for good. I feel bad for everyone trying to do their jobs but struggling under the weight of so much baggage.

wybiral 9y ago
> the specific feeling that the agency is not a force for good. There are a mixture of feelings about the agency. The same can be said of the CIA and FBI. And this is nothing new.
- draw_down 9y ago
  I don’t think you can say there is “nothing new” in how the NSA is perceived. Both externally, and internally as well, if the reportage in the story is correct.
- acdha 9y ago
  Not new but accentuated: I think a lot of people used to know there was some gray area but thought we were generally on the right side (not unlike the U.S. attitude about torture until the Bush-era reversal), before the pattern of relentless disregard for the law and American interests really went public. A lot more people are comfortable with, say, targeted foreign attacks than broad domestic dragnets or attacking American companies or standards.
  - wybiral 9y ago
    > relentless disregard for the law and American interests really went public Are you talking about metadata collection?

iokevins 9y ago

The State of California recently initiated a reclassification project for IT positions, which includes evaluating salaries. They last reclassified positions in 1976...back when Elvis was alive (note: salaries have risen modestly since that time, thankfully).

cryoshon 9y ago

with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile during applications at most tech companies. if you're going to invade privacy on a massive scale, you better be ready for the consequences.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile You're getting down voted, but I've seen this first hand. I don't completely agree with it. But the employer's justification was that he would never be able to trust that the candidate wasn't a mole. (I pointed out that the NSA is probably capable of better hiding its moles.)
- qaq 9y ago
  While you might have seen it it is very far from general rule at companies that matter in security space
- rhexs 9y ago
  Anyone who works in intelligence is evil and should leave and find a career in the private sector, but I won't hire them because they're evil and previously worked in intelligence! Thankfully resume sorting is effectively already an entirely random process, so I hope this comment doesn't bother anyone too much.
  - yters 9y ago
    Should we have no intelligence agencies? A better approach is to populate our intelligence agencies with good people, instead of leaving it up to incompetent/bad people.
    - someguydave 9y ago
      >Should we have no intelligence agencies? Why not? It would get rid of a big excuse for governments to conceal things from their citizens, who supposedly oversee them. If someone in the government needs to find something out, they could always just pay someone to do it on a contract basis.

genzoman 9y ago

the CIA funded Washington Post sullying the good name of those noble domestic spying NSA'ers? Faker News

dang 9y ago
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments here?
- acct1771 9y ago
  The only real problem I see is a lack of elaboration on some of the important little-known politics at play, here.

mabbo 9y ago

When I was just about to graduate from University, I had an offer from Amazon on the way (yay internships) but not really in-hand yet, so I kept interviewing. One of the options was CSEC, Canada's NSA. The stark reality was that at Amazon, in 2 or 3 years I would be making double what CSEC was offering. Early career pay in one was end-career pay in the other. They seemed nice, and I suppose what they were doing felt important, but the money was simply too good to turn down. (No regrets either- I worry if I'd gone with them, I might have wound up living in Russia with a roommate named Ed.)

pm90 9y ago
It worked better for you and I'm glad to hear that. For some people, the stability of a Govt. job, the regularity of promotions, the lack of long term uncertainty and perhaps the absence of as high expectations makes it worthwhile to pursue a job that pays less.
- mabbo 9y ago
  Actually, this stability and security was another big reason I chose not to join Government. I had done a few internships in the public service, and what I saw horrified me. When you have job security and low expectations placed on you, it's wonderful. When everyone does, it's horrible. There is relatively little room for the lazy and useless in the private sector.
  - pm90 9y ago
    Again, I ask that you refrain from characterizing everyone as lazy and useless. I know a lot of women friends who choose to join Government service because of its long term stability which is important for them as they raise a family. They are some of the hardest working and smartest people I know. Sure bad apples are harder to eliminate, but that doesn't mean everyone is bad.
    - mabbo 9y ago
      I agree that my choice of words implies everyone is- and that is not true. What I saw in government was a lot of dead weight adding little value and taking home paychecks, being carried by a small group of people working their asses off to keep everything afloat. The dead weight couldn't be fired short of them doing something crazy, like sneaking into the office over the weekend and drinking half the wine set aside for the Christmas party (so the story went of the only guy who got fired from that office). The heavy lifters felt unable to even take a vacation because they know nothing would get done if they left- example, a boss I had who wasn't sure she could go to her sister's wedding in Jamaica for two weeks because the office wouldn't manage without her. My own wife is an engineer in municipal government. She's a superhero as far as I can tell. The dead weight on her team can't be fired, and she does many times the work they do for a smaller salary- they've been here longer, you see, so they make more money. Perhaps my perspective on public sector jobs is skewed, but I've yet to hear a compelling reason I would want to have one.

craftyguy 9y ago

good.

0xBA5ED 9y ago

Wouldn't worry too much. If they're heading to SV, their talents may still benefit the NSA.

nraynaud 9y ago
Those fine people who have shown such a good jugement in choosing their previous job will be perfectly fine managing my google history and the cookies in my browser, I’m really looking forwards to it. I’m really curious if they’ll have the power to get more people killed at google or at the NSA.

Feniks 9y ago

This is happening across the US government as a whole. The US State department is dead for instance. When you have talent and options why stay with a creaky ship that's sailing straight into a hurricane with a mad captain at the helm?

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alexnewman 9y ago

Been the story since George bush. I wonder if they would have acted narrowly within the law if they would have had better org

solarkraft 9y ago

> The people who have left were responsible for collecting and analyzing the intelligence that goes into the president’s daily briefing Cool, because the demand is gone too.

erikb 9y ago
Exactly, right? Maybe they are not even angry about losing the analysts.

paulie_a 9y ago

Why work for the NSA when you can overcharge Being a contractor for an equally inept organization

Tyrannosaur 9y ago

Might it also be because of the cost of overcoming their conscience? I understand that there are multiple groups in the NSA that do things other than illegal surveillance and hacking, but I would have an even higher price than other companies' offers I would require in exchange for my moral values if the NSA ever offered me any position at all...

itronitron 9y ago
still less than the cost of someone overcoming their conscience for working at Facebook
- RepressedEmu 9y ago
  Only on HN can you find people who think the NSA is worse than Facebook.

jwatte 9y ago

The NSA needs educated smart people. The president has denigrated education and smart people. NSA employees work for the president. Reap what you sow.

erikb 9y ago
With the speed of development in government organisation one could wonder if the current fallout is Trump's fault or Bush's faulth, though.
- zeveb 9y ago
  I think that you're missing someone in between Mr. Bush & President Trump …
  - erikb 9y ago
    I think I leave him out on purpose.

stackreality 9y ago

In this case, an inevitable outcome is likely the privatization of more of these industries. Let companies like Palantir take over the job and ensure we have some solid regulations to ensure Thiel can't read our emails.

yuhong 9y ago

My favorite is that the more the FBI/NSA spends, the more government debt get printed. You may know that the government shutdown is because of a debt ceiling.

dimva 9y ago

This is a problem across all of government. As a mediocre senior software engineer with no reports, I was paid more last year than the goddamn President of the United States (and no, it's not because I got lucky with stock). This is completely stupid and unacceptable. Of course our choices are going to be Hillary vs Trump if we pay the top leader in the country less than a mediocre software engineer. Of course Hillary will give secret speeches to Wall St firms - how else is she going to pay her bills? Of course the government is going to be incompetent and corrupt - we can't hire good people at the salaries we're paying unless they use their influence to obtain side gigs in the private sector (often after their service, but that means they won't do anything to annoy their future bosses). Why does Sundar Pichai make 500x more than the President? Do we, as a society, value running Google well 500x more than running our government well? Government salaries need to be raised significantly (2-500x) across the board, or the government will continue being the mess it is now.

cgmg 9y ago
> This is completely stupid and unacceptable. Why? > Why does Sundar Pichai make 500x more than the President? Do we, as a society, value running Google well 500x more than running our government well? Why must the Presidency be the most highly-paid position for the government to run well? That is a ridiculous and silly assumption.
- michael_storm 9y ago
  Why must the CEO of Google be the most highly-paid position for Google to run well? The point is that the pay for participating in self-interested capitalist endeavors leads to outsize rewards compared to those dedicated to serving society. (Including thousands of career civil servants, since leadership positions have their own trappings.) If we value those who serve society, perhaps we should pay them commensurate with how much we value them -- and get better results in the bargain.
  - chronic193 9y ago
    > If we value those who serve society, perhaps we should pay them commensurate with how much we value them We don't value those who serve society. People care more about Facebook than their president/prime minister.

Jd 9y ago

I'm hiring ;)

erikb 9y ago
And who are you? Working for a hospital or something? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8gaoEQqoA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8gaoEQqoA8 Your website can't be reached btw.
- Jd 9y ago
  I work on and advise several projects involving protection and cyber-security, specifically within the blockchain space.

bgentry 9y ago

Rogers disputed that there was any increase in attrition and told his employees that they should stop complaining and get back to work. Can’t imagine why anybody would want to leave.

ocschwar 9y ago

The top talent might be leaving, but the databases and the lovely toys are staying put. To be used by not-top-talent. Interesting times.

kgc 9y ago

The salary cap sounds like it will lead to more outsourcing, which would increase expenses overall.

scarmig 9y ago

Question: how does this compare to other states? I'm particularly interested in China's equivalent(s?) of the NSA. Do they manage to retain talent? Is it because the PRC's elite believes more in its mission? Is it higher status than the NSA? Do they offer higher relative salaries?

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gervase 9y ago
I think the best we can do is speculate on this, as China's cyber capabilities are still relatively unknown by the public [0]. However, based on their investment in academics and a generally more positive view of government jobs in general (possibly due to historic sociocultural contexts [1]), I believe it's likely that their equivalent groups are probably treated quite well. For example, for successful US-trained Chinese researchers, the Chinese government offers generous funding, publication bonuses [2], and high pay (comparable to, or better than, US institutions) for those who are willing to return to China and run research labs there. Additionally, due to the relative lack of commercial opportunities for talent, creative, and ambitious home-grown talent (vs the opportunities in the US available to similar US-trained talent), the bar the government must exceed is commensurately lower. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination 2. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/cash-bonuses-peer-reviewed-papers-go-global http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/08/cash-bonuses-peer-rev...

jhiska 9y ago

>If the NSA is going to spy on us, wouldn't you like that to be as secure as possible? I'd rather those perverts not peep on us; this isn't an unreasonable request.

zaro 9y ago

Finally some good news from NSA.

candiodari 9y ago

> the nation’s 17 spy agencies. 17. WTF.

ENOTTY 9y ago
From Wikipedia[1]: CIA, NSA/CSS, NRO, DIA, NGA, intelligence elements of the five armed forces (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard), and intelligence elements of the State Department, Department of Energy, DHS, Treasury, DEA, FBI, and finally overseeing them all, ODNI. Each specializes in collecting a different kind of intelligence or in a different focus for analysis. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...
- yters 9y ago
  Why do the DoE and Treasury need intelligence elements?
  - foxhound6 9y ago
    DoE handles the nuclear arsenal. Treasury contains the Secret Service.
  - ENOTTY 9y ago
    Treasury handles tracking of financial flows involving sanctioned entities, terrorist groups, nations hostile to the US, etc. DoE handles nukes.

ENOTTY 9y ago

By way of comparison, GCHQ personnel seem to be leaving for 4-5x salary from big tech companies[1]. So do the math and figure out what the GCHQ folks are being paid. Also, GCHQ has hired 494 contractors for 71m GBP[2]. [1]: https://sites.google.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/files/2016-2017_ISC_AR.pdf?attredirects=1 https://sites.google.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/files/2016..., page 40 [2]: Ibid, page 70

sofaofthedamned 9y ago
I live in Cheltenham and pre-Snowden may have entertained the idea for working there. I tracked a job they were advertising for nearly a year - they were offering ~32k for a Linux expert with years of experience. Good luck on that one. I think they eventually converted it to a contract role, but even then I wouldn't entertain it. Another friend worked at the big James Bond building in London, was regularly taken around the world at short notice to do security things, and was on less than 40k. He loved that job more than anything in the world but literally couldn't afford to live there so went contracting for 5x the money. Apparently in the government a large part of salary reviews is based on (age + seniority), so you're waiting a long time for a decent uplift that may never arrive.
- ENOTTY 9y ago
  Just to be clear, your amounts are in GBP right?
  - sofaofthedamned 9y ago
    Yup.

tequila_shot 9y ago

Honest question: What's the skillset of a hacker at NSA? Not that I'm targeting to become one, just curious as to how someone would become a hacker.

mooneater 9y ago

Might expect this to ultimately lead to privatization of these services. Which is black mirror territory.

natch 9y ago

There's a lot of blaming of external factors being injected into this discussion. Namely, government pay scales, and the Trump factor. But let's not forget the NSA's own self-inflicted wounds as well. Let's see, here's what I remember: * mission creep * overreach * LOVEINT * massive collection of bulk intelligence with dubious justifications * withholding information about 0 days it wanted to stockpile for its own use * misleading technical committees so as to weaken encryption and security related standards * introducing flawed security protocols * paying money to security companies (RSA) to introduce weaknesses * (thus with the above four items) actively sabotaging its own mission of helping to secure our nation's systems * allowing its documents to be leaked en masse * allowing possibly its most powerful and dangerous (though we don't know) sets of tools to be leaked as well. Did I forget anything?

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Yes, you forgot one thing: * We need a powerful spy organization to compete on the world stage. This is an unpopular truth that people in our circles tend to forget. Rome was an influence solely due to the success of their military. What do you think will happen when ours becomes ineffective? And the NSA is a key part of our military. Intelligence is everything. I think it's good the overreach was exposed, but I was worried about exactly this outcome.
- perfunctory 9y ago
  "* We need a powerful spy organization to compete on the world stage." - maybe I'm missing some irony here, but how is this a "self-inflicted wound"?
- kodablah 9y ago
  > We need a powerful spy organization to compete on the world stage I disagree or at least don't agree to the extent I might have in a more embattled time (i.e. any time in the past). I do agree intelligence serves the military well, I just don't agree with military intelligence scope growth at a time when military use is shrinking. I'm not sure history repeats itself here as much as perpetuates the justifications being used.

nathanvanfleet 9y ago

Good?

bariswheel 9y ago

This is not a good thing at all. This will lead to a shittier NSA and with their power, this is a lousy combination,

candiodari 9y ago

> The brain drain has been so pronounced that at one gathering in 2016 of the agency’s elite hacking division, one individual raised the concern with Rogers directly. According to several people familiar with the exchange, Rogers disputed that there was any increase in attrition and told his employees that they should stop complaining and get back to work. Remember this. As someone who started their professional life in 2000, lived through 2009, and went through a multinational's "reorg" (mass-firing by geography, several 10s of thousands of people), let me tell you : As soon as you notice there is general discontent, and people no longer care enough about their jobs to ask questions like this to the top brass, it is time to make sure you have another job lined up. You can get better jobs this way, and the hammer will come down. Above all, know that this Rogers guy is fairly honest. And yet, he directly contradicts the Washington Post. He's an exec, and he has ONE job : do exactly what his superiors say without bother them. He (once for me it was a she) will NOT give you any piece of information you do not already have. They are there to get people to work together. By "motivating". By lying. By cheating. This means that when it comes to the health of the company and your future job prospects, a sober chat with the cleaning staff will yield more useful information than an hour long "fireside chat" with a highly placed manager. Not because they know a lot, but simply because they don't lie, and they know a little. An executive is not talking to you, except in the way a vet is talking to stray dogs at the impound. They don't respect you, they can't do anything for you, they don't like you ... and they're very, very good at hiding this (just look at financial presentations on youtube, say of the IBM CEO, knowing that she has for years, every 2 months or so, fired 1000+ people, with the constant online reports of them getting cheated out of severance. Listen to her, then think about the kind of person who does that. You half expect to get free candy and a hug every 2 minutes or so when listening to her. Or listen to Clinton talking, knowing that he's the sort of man that threatens women to have sex with him. Think about what those people he talks to really mean to him)

itronitron 9y ago
I feel like many organizations, of which NSA is one example, make the mistake of putting technical program leads in charge of people. Leading people and motivating them to do their best work together requires a different skill set, and Rogers' response to the vocalized attrition concern suggests that he isn't capable of keeping people in the organization. I appreciate that he took time to talk with staff and take questions but he needs to become a better listener, or in other words ... work on his signals intelligence.

zeep 9y ago

Now they really won't be able to analyze all that data...

rdl 9y ago

I remember predicting this back when the Snowden first leaked, and someone popular on HN saying it wouldn't happen. I suspect the reorg and general politics outside NSA have had a bigger impact than "oh, spying is wrong" in popular culture, though.

danielovichdk 9y ago

I wonder if there is also some people morale in this. I mean, if I was a hacker and knew what the NSA had been up to in regards of mass-surveilance, my integrity and morale would be like "heck no, thies org' fucked up and I want nothing to do with them, at all!".

peter_retief 9y ago

I would love to work for them, creative interesting projects with funding, pick me!

Maryaki 9y ago

great

bryanrasmussen 9y ago

Actually I remember reading at some point that the people who have the best careers in tech move between government and private at the right times, when there is going to be a downturn in the economy they move into the security of government work and work on the rules and regulations that will govern the future, as the economy turns back up they move into consulting regarding those particular rules and regulations. This actually points to one of my major career mistakes in that when I left my government job I was burned out on the standard I had just spent some years seeing through to law, and instead of working consulting on it I took a totally unrelated job (based on the enticements of a friend who promised we would get to work on something I really wanted to work on) I left millions on the table just by that one stupid decision. but then again I was really burned out on it. on edit: improved formatting

pjc50 9y ago

Another view: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/who-is-reality-winner.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/who-is-reality-... That was circulated with the comment "the risk is not so much people running to the Russians as people running to civil society - the NSA is not as popular as they think." The NSA, like much of the US system, demands absolute unconditional loyalty. Internal dissent is not possible. Taking dissent public will get you sent to prison where you're not allowed to speak to journalists.

erikb 9y ago
replace prison with getting fired and you have the same in the industry.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Those are two rather different things though?
- pm90 9y ago
  Clearly you've never been to prison.
  - erikb 9y ago
    Clearly the point is not the comparison between the impact of both experiences on the receiving end.

tanilama 9y ago

Consider it has such bad reputation and public image, and subpar salary this is not surprising at all.

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meri_dian 9y ago

Seems like we should redirect some of the funding the traditional military branches get to the NSA. The work they do is more relevant and important than ever before, and it doesn't look like we're going to have a hot war any time soon.

ataturk 9y ago

Let's be honest for a minute: There's been a major regime change in the US. The "talent" leaving were probably given a choice between going quietly or being prosecuted. Mr. Binney may have had something to do with all of it.

throwaway19372 9y ago

Disclaimer: I work for the federal government, but my thoughts are my own. From what I have seen, there are a mix of issues that cause this: - It takes a long time to hire someone (usually 2-3 months), and if they need a clearance, the process is even longer (some clearances can take easily over a year now, and that person cannot do any work until they have them). - A lot of people want to go into these organizations to do cool things, but then find out they have a lot of additional duties they do not wish to do. - Government salaries are capped, and it is very difficult to fire a government civilian. The issue of taking a long time to hire someone means that if someone leaves, their job does not go away. So their duties have to go somewhere, usually on someone else, and that will take a minimum of 3 months if you hire someone off the street. If the job requires a clearance, you now are waiting over a year if the person did not have the right clearance (while the person sits on that spot, so you can't hire anyone else if they come up). From what I have seen, most people hired off of the streets are from college/grad school, and they are excited to do technical work. However, since the government caps civilian salaries, they will frequently contract out technical work (so they can hire the very expensive technical personnel). This means most of the technical work is done by contractors. Civilians more often than not oversee the contractors doing the technical work. If you have a technically inclined government civilian, then those contractors frequently snatch them up. So now you have a compounding problem of it is difficult to hire/keep technical people, and the work they do is more and more non-technical, as most of the work to oversee contractors is what is called an "inherently governmental function", so those have to be done by a government person. This is a negative feedback loop that really hurts keeping these types of technical people.

0xADADA 9y ago

Tis article reeks of Executive Branch propaganda from anonymous sources "according to current and former U.S. officials" etc etc

RogueIMP 9y ago

This isn't just NSA, but tech positions GOV wide. Lots of locations are requiring Contractors be put on an equivalent pay scale as the GOV employees, causing them both to look elsewhere... Why take a position with less stability and benefits, for the same, and in some cases less, pay.

known 9y ago

What's wrong in leaving when somebody is paying better?

k__ 9y ago

They probably hoped, if they work long enough for the man, they'll become the man.

boysabr3 9y ago

Related: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/8/15557846/stripe-peiter-mudge-zatko-jon-kaltwasser-security-hire https://www.recode.net/2017/5/8/15557846/stripe-peiter-mudge...

jancsika 9y ago

I'd suggest separating these anonymous complaints into those which at least have boolean choices and those which have unary choices. Reorganization of dept. has created red tape. Ok, that seems like one of many opinions a source at the NSA could have. Snowden hurt our agency and made our jobs more difficult. I'm not sure that an NSA source could have any other opinions on this matter, especially given that a) I've never read anyone who currently works at the NSA call Snowden anything but a traitor and b) the NSA certainly knows the identity of the sources for this story. I think we have to reject such complaints as facile.

andy_ppp 9y ago

I read somewhere that 70% of US intelligence spending these days was on private contracting companies anyway. I guess if you’re good you'll end up at one of them?

DannyB2 9y ago

> The people who have left were responsible for collecting > and analyzing the intelligence that goes into the > president’s daily briefing. I seem to recall that the president's daily briefing is now a single page with pictures. How many people does it take to produce that?

ixtli 9y ago
Why is this getting down voted?

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

Privatizing lots of their jobs, and seeing their jobs given to people who are on privatized salaries with private companies, bleeding the tax payer more.. of course they are going to jump ship for a higher salray. Stop the private contracting of some of our most sensitive missions, and you'll stop this.

TallGuyShort 9y ago

I'll never forget talking to an NSA recruiter (cybersecurity expert doing a recruiting assignment, not a full-time recruiter) at a university job fair. I asked if he felt like he was really spending most of his time protecting people or if a lot of it was political agenda and budget protection, etc. His answer was, "well, it's not all politics..." Thank you, recruiter, for making that career choice a supremely easy one.

nimbius 9y ago

Speaking from experience, I applied to the NSA a few years ago and its surreal how unrealistic the expectations were. a major problem with NSA employment is the mandatory 5 year contractor like status period with half-pay. the NSA expects seasoned professionals from the private sector to join its ranks with a 33k salary? get real. The agency also prides itself on an almost obscene reliance on Polygraphs, a technology no more accurate or scientifically sound than a babushka shuffling chicken bones and reading tea leaves. I also wasnt exactly blown away by the interview questions. my technical screening for a Linux position came from former members of the military, who grilled me on 2 unix questions before asking if they could switch to windows, confessing they 'didnt know much linux.'

jessriedel 9y ago
> The agency also prides itself on an almost obscene reliance on Polygraphs, a technology no more accurate or scientifically sound than a babushka shuffling chicken bones and reading tea leaves. I can't find out why I see smart people repeating this all the time. It's not true. Polygraphs are very flawed, and they are especially vulnerable to preparatory countermeasures, but they have non-trivial predictive power. When I ask people to justify their dismissal of polygraphs, they generally point to the fact that they are not allowed in court, but this is a terrible reason. Hearsay isn't allowed in court either but that doesn't mean it isn't useful.
- dclowd9901 9y ago
  If it doesn't stand up to "beyond a reasonable doubt" how can you have such faith in it? Hearsay is a fine example, as I wouldn't want my innocence predicated upon someone's flawed memory or whim.
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    Because "beyond a reasonable doubt" is a much higher level of certainty than we have for making many decisions in life? The NSA isn't jailing people based on a lie-detector, they are just using it as a necessary but not sufficient criteria for granting security access. It's OK to deny such access based on weak or circumstantial evidence.

_zachs 9y ago

I've got an idea, stop giving Congress free health care and stop giving Congress a $100k a year pension after they've resigned. Bam, there's your competitive salary to offer NSA engineers.

forgotmysn 9y ago
wow thank you so much for your brilliant solution. considering that both of those require Congress to accomplish, do you have another brilliant idea for getting them to do it?

dvradrebel 9y ago

A lot of EU security experts (UK included) take time off to make extra money through companies like ours - senseiclub.com - to train corporate in anything from ethical hacking to certified GDPR compliance - they can't be making much at their regular jobs. Some even register their own company - which makes sense - as freelancing full time, end of the day, is possible. Make your own schedule, decline to go to work, take a month off - it's good fun. We got some people booked for over 110 days out of 250 for 2018 already. As for pensions and savings - folks go to wealth managers. Hit me up if you want some really good training courses for your company or your buddy is looking for extra gigs (GCHQ folks are welcome). Think productschool.com for cyber security, compliance, cloud and data. Cheerio

jcoffland 9y ago

Government work also suffers from over regulation. A friend of mine who works for a major defense contractor as an electrical engineer is literally not allowed to use a screwdriver driver. He must requisition a union worker for jobs involving a screwdriver. This takes tons of time and the simple job may ultimately never get done. In practice, he and his colleagues wait until after 5pm, when the union guys have gone, to use screwdrivers. I told this story to my Uncle who worked for 30 years at a national lab. He said they had a similar problem and solution for using a broom to sweep up a mess in their work area. These stories sound unbelievable but I believe they are common and that situations like this regularly cripple and demoralize government work.

Danihan 9y ago
And this is why government projects are essentially doomed to fail versus capitalism, in the long-view.

angel_j 9y ago

Don't hire these people!

throwitfarfar 9y ago

NSA is in the middle of a bozo explosion. It's hard to keep good people when they have to deal with so many bozos. To give you an example, there was a reorg a few years ago to outsource NSA's IT. (Makes a lot of sense that an agency that pretty much only does IT would outsource IT, right?) In the reorg, 500+ people were identified as having no discernible skill that was relevant to the mission. They were segregated into their own org and given busy work. When the outsourcing occurred, the contractor was incentivized to employ and retain them for 2 years, including the 500+. To entice them, they paid them above their government salary. The contractor could not figure out what to do with them either. It treated them as "casual employees". They were given a salary, but did not have to report to work and had no responsibilities. For 2 years. Once the incentive ran out, these folks went back to NSA and got rehired as government employees. According to the hiring rules, they went right to the top of the stack.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

naveen99 9y ago

Or maybe anyone who understands cryptography enough to work at the NSA, understands bitcoin and blockchains enough to realize they can make a lot more money for a lot less effort in cryptocurrencies. Same with machine learning. The crypto bubble goes beyond money, it goes to creativity and brain drain from the rest of the economy.

gozur88 9y ago
Plus security. It's always been a skill in relatively high demand, but in the last ten years or so companies have been willing to pay whatever it takes to avoid getting hacked. My company brought in all sorts of consultants just after, coincidentally I'm sure, the Target CEO lost his job because of a hack.

ataturk 9y ago

Any chance, any chance at all we will return to Constitutional government in the US? You know, where the machine isn't spying on us all 24/7?

z0ltan 9y ago

LOL.

zcytrewq 9y ago

I was not sure do NSA have any morals to flag about ??

kalop 9y ago

They end up going to private corporations like Booz Allen, then the government ends up contracting these companies in the private sector lol.